End-of-summer greetings to all of you!

Unless you’ve been boycotting all news media, you have no doubt read (and read, and read) about the problems – the earthquake - in the mortgage finance arena, and the resulting changes – aftershocks – that ALL home sellers are likely to experience.

It is hard to explain to people that we are, for the most part, insulated from these happenings. The financing issues do concern us, and they are likely to tighten mortgage monies in the future, even though area hasn’t seen a HUGE usage of these sub-prime monies. How did all of this happen?

I don’t know when the emphasis on owning a home switched from having your own place to live to an “investment,” but I don’t think it did the real estate industry any long-time good. When the money analysts on TV started talking about houses in the same breath as stocks and bonds, I think it set up us for the fall. When mortgage money became so easy (no verification, money back from sellers, NO money or “skin” in the game) AND a flock of speculators descended upon an area and drove the prices up, (up to 30% of sales in some areas were to this type of buyer), it definitely created a FALSE inflation in home prices that simply couldn’t be sustained.

Real estate always has been and always will be a good long term investment. And unlike other investments, you actually get some tangible good out of it while it goes up in value. No one can live in their STOCKS or bring their children up in a BOND.

And then, back to the local nature of real estate… we didn’t see a huge appreciation and we’re therefore not seeing depreciation. We don’t have the added problem of huge unemployment, like the hard-hit Michigan areas, and rates remain good, so we are holding our own. The lack of that distinction in the news reports that you see is, in my mind, deceptive and dangerous. Our market activity shouldn’t have changed at all, but it has, and I believe it’s because of the national news that blankets all of real estate in a “don’t buy now” attitude.

We can only do what we can do – and letting you know our viewpoint, with the hopes that it will enlighten you and you’ll pass it on, is what we can do for right now. Hang in there – soon there will be some bad news that the press will focus on, and we’ll all get back to normal. We continue to market your home with ALL of the tools and methods available, and know that we’ll be successful, in our job of getting your home sold. Thank you again for your trust in us.